Quiet Times

By my count, this is the fifth time in my gaming career when I've gone a significant length of time without gaming.

The first time was way back with my original group when, for reasons too stupid and embarrasing to recount, I had a falling out with the rest of the group. Fortunately, we gradually patched things up and got back to gaming, but it was a dull time in the meantime!

The second, and probably longest, of the fallow times was during my first year at university. This was caused by a combination of two things: my first group had finally split up and gone their separate ways, while I was too involved in my studies to seek out the Gaming Society on campus. This year was marked by quite a lot of reading of AD&D 2nd Edition books, as that edition was coming to the end of its life but I was yet to discover the joys of "Vampire: The Masquerade". In that year I also first became active in online communities, though only to a very minimal extent.

The third quiet time was during my last few months in Yeovil, when I was avoiding the local gaming scene. This was not a good time!

And then came the fourth time, was was a couple of years after I returned from Yeovil. The issue here was that I actually was involved in a game, in theory at least. Unfortunately, though, the group was small enough that our quorum amounted to 100% attendance, and was almost never available. Over time, it became apparent that the group was basically lost. And this, eventually, led to me starting up the Falkirk RPG Meetup, which has gradually expanded over time. So, that was good.

Of course, this latest quiet time is largely a result of a house move gone wrong - my most recent campaign ended in a TPK, and the expectation was that we would be moving imminently thereafter. Obiously, that is yet to happen, and it just hasn't quite made sense to start anything up in the meantime.

I now find myself contemplating the end of this fallow time - surely it can't go on much longer? And, that being the case, I wonder what shape the end of it will take. Will there be a new campaign? Indeed, does it make sense to start up a new campaign given the disappointment of the last couple? Alternately, should I focus on playing for a while, or run some one-shots to get back into the swing of things?

And one other thought: maybe I need to seek out a new game, or perhaps even a whole new style of game, for when I get back to things? Probably the most satisfying return to gaming I've enjoyed in the past was on returning to it was when joining the GUGS society at Glasgow - and my introduction to the aforementioned V:tM game. So, maybe it's time for something new?